Optical interconnection is an optical signal transmission manner using an optical waveguide (such as an optical fiber) as a transmission medium, and has advantages of low power consumption, low delay and large bandwidth.
When data is transmitted based on traditional optical interconnection, an interface controller converts data in an electrical signal form sent by an interconnection endpoint in an optical interconnection network into data in an optical signal form, and sends the data in an optical signal form to a switching node connected to the interface controller. The optical signal is routed hop by hop by switching nodes in the optical interconnection network to an interface controller connected to another interconnection endpoint, and the optical signal is converted into an electrical signal and sent to the other interconnection endpoint.
However, the data in an optical signal form cannot be parsed directly, and information included in the data can be obtained using parsing only after the data in an optical signal form is converted into data in an electrical signal form. Therefore, each switching node on a transmission path needs to first perform an optical-to-electrical conversion on received data in an optical signal form, and obtain routing information from converted data in an electrical signal form. Each switching node on a transmission path also needs to perform routing according to the routing information to determine a next hop, and then perform an electrical-to-optical conversion on the data in an electrical signal form and sends converted data in an optical signal form to the next hop. Therefore, there are problems of an extra delay and power consumption caused by an electrical-to-optical conversion.